Episode 31

Shane Mercer [00:00:00]:

What does a successful NFL season look like to you? What will make you happy come Super Bowl?

Andrew Pace [00:00:06]:

You get asking Kenny what will make them happy?

Andrew Pace [00:00:12]:

Some philosophical answer, one thing.

Shane Mercer [00:00:28]:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Behind the Lines, a very big special NFL edition. I can't wait. I'm super Jacked. All right, I'm your host Shane Mercer, and this is the only podcast purifying the sports betting industry. Remember to like, download, subscribe, follow us on all the socials, and you can find us everywhere you get your podcasts. If you have a betting story you want to share, comment below. We'll bring it up on the show. We might even bring you on the show. All right. And if you want to join inplayLIVE, we would love to have you. We got a special promo code for you that is the 'BEHINDTHELINES' promo code. All right. I am so excited for today's episode because I love the NFL. Who doesn't? Biggest sports betting market in North America by far, maybe even the world. All right, on the show today, we've got John Wilson, also known as GosuThune. We've got the golden goose himself, Kenny Huber, and as always, the founder of inplayLIVE, Andrew Pace. Welcome in, guys. What a week almost behind us. We are recording this on a Monday, so week one isn't officially behind us, but most of it in the rear view mirror. John, I'm going to start off with you. What is your biggest takeaway from this past weekend?

GosuThune [00:01:46]:

I think the biggest takeaway for the NFL side this past weekend actually was maybe not something to do with kind of the live betting, though it does fall into that category, but it was just how sloppy a lot of these teams looked. And now that we're in this new era where teams aren't playing in the preseason at all, especially in those first half of the first slate of games, there was just a lot of nasty football, which really created a lot of value, I think, for us, obviously, as we definitely like when people struggle to score, to move the ball. But that was definitely one thing that really popped out at me, was just how nasty a lot of those games looked to start the season.

Shane Mercer [00:02:24]:

Yeah, I mean, that Sunday nighter, just ugly. What a thumping the Cowboys laid on the Giants in New York with the rain pouring down. But you're right, we saw a lot of teams really struggle offensively. It was tough to move the ball. Kenny, what did you take away from this past week?

The Golden Goose [00:02:41]:

To be honest, just as an Eagles fan, I thought they looked really poor despite winning. I felt like they looked like a really poor team, and I was really optimistic for the season. Hopefully they get together.

Andrew Pace [00:02:54]:

Will you shut up about the Eagles? God damn it. Every time you're on anything relating to anything.

Andrew Pace [00:03:01]:

Oh, the eagles. Eagles, eagles. Like, God damn it.

Shane Mercer [00:03:06]:

Kenny, anything non Eagles related that you want to share? Anything that you sort of noticed, hey, this is off, or this isn't right, or this could be better or something. Maybe that surprised.

The Golden Goose [00:03:20]:

From an NFL player standpoint. John kind of hit the nail on the head. It was really sloppy football early going in most of those games yesterday. It kind of shows that maybe they should play some of the starters more often in the preseason to kind of be geared up for the regular season because I just feel like a lot of the offenses weren't on the same page throughout the first half of the games yesterday.

Shane Mercer [00:03:48]:

Yeah, I mean, you know, another one, it's really kind of the week started that way with the Chiefs game and I mean, jeez, talk about a terrible offense. I think every receiver on that offense probably had the worst day of their career. Pace, what are you taking away from this weekend?

Andrew Pace [00:04:05]:

Well, the Eagles didn't look good yesterday.

Andrew Pace [00:04:11]:

Right after you said that to him.

Andrew Pace [00:04:12]:

I was like, he's probably going to.

Andrew Pace [00:04:13]:

Say something about Jalen Hurts then. I'm just teasing you, Kenny. I mean, takeaways yesterday. I think one of the biggest things is you've really seen the passing of the torch. It is very obvious that the Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, Matt Ryan, whomever you want to list in that category, it's very obvious that that is over. So that means that your perception of good in football, it does not exist at all. And then add in the underwhelming performances from Patrick Mahomes joe Burrow jalen Hurts. Am I missing anyone? John?

GosuThune [00:05:01]:

There's a lot of bad quarterback play, that's for sure.

Andrew Pace [00:05:03]:

I'm referring to these five elite, right? These five quarterbacks that are viewed as elite. So take in the passing of the torch and then these five that are supposed to be elite. We haven't seen Josh Allen because, like you said, we're recording on Monday, but they were awful. They were absolutely awful. So throw everything that you know out the window, and that would be my biggest takeaway from week one. And then that allows you, obviously, to focus on opportunities. And one of the biggest things we were supposed to know this season is that the Rams are absolutely terrible. We're supposed to know that they suck. Now, they looked every bit like the team that won the Super Bowl two years ago and did Matt Stafford play last year? So why are the Rams bad? And that was one of our best games that we bet on yesterday, was that Rams game because of that perception. Seattle being a big favorite at home against a team that looked like they returned to their old, you know, Matt.

Shane Mercer [00:06:05]:

Stafford having the injury issues last season. I think it was his thumb and at certain points his elbow. And he clearly seems to be past all of that. That'll be really interesting to sort of see how that unfolds. Okay, another big part of getting ready for week one and getting set up for that first Sunday of NFL football. Know we've seen your nine monitor wall on one of our past Behind the Lines episodes. Kenny, you also shared your setup on that episode as well, and really cool stuff. But we are seeing a change this season with how the games are being broadcast with Google parent company Alphabet, having a deal with the NFL. So let's talk about that because Pace, Kenny, and John, I'm sure you have some thoughts as well, but I know you guys have already been sharing your thoughts with how this went for the first weekend. So let's get into it. Kenny, you were the first to post in the discord group about it, I think, so give me your thoughts right off the bat.

The Golden Goose [00:07:10]:

It actually took a little while to figure out how to contact YouTube TV, so I spent a couple of hours this morning contacting YouTube TV, getting the call escalated up the chain, and I basically bashed Google for the latency issues that they had. It was a good 45 seconds to 60 seconds behind my over the air antenna where I was like, amazon isn't really even a broadcasting company, and they're faster than my over the air antenna for Thursday Night Football. So I'm like, why? I don't understand why Google, such a massive company, can't at least be on par with Amazon when you've had all this time to practice with YouTube TV being around for several years now. And anyway, they ended up crediting me a month of service. So I'm hoping that they can bombarded with calls and they try to partner up with a company. It's called phoenix. They promise that they can do under a second delay from over the air antenna for broadcast, for streaming. So hopefully they partner up with a company like that, use their technology and fix these latency issues. But, yeah, it's almost basically unusable for information from a betting standpoint when you're a minute or more delayed because you're two plays behind. I mean, a hell of a lot can happen in two plays, and that's under normal conditions. Forget about if they're in a two minute drill or trying to play a hurry up offense or anything like that where they're getting plays off every 20 seconds. Now you're four plays behind, you could be seeing first down and there's actually fourth down. So it's kind of insane to that kind of delay in this day and age that a company like Google can't fix this.

Shane Mercer [00:08:52]:

All right, but at least they've given you a month free of service. So you're going to get a month of 62nd latent service. I don't know how much.

GosuThune [00:08:59]:

Kenny doesn't have much money, so it's good that he got that money.

Shane Mercer [00:09:04]:

Yeah, he needed the discount, right? Pace, you and I talked about this a lot in the offseason, a fair amount, because this is something that you were really kind of like. How is this going to work? Is this going to know after seeing it for that first Sunday, I mean, how are you feeling?

Andrew Pace [00:09:20]:

Well, I kind of headed into the first Sunday with high hopes because obviously back in April, YouTube TV said that they promise a high quality streaming experience in direct response to being asked about the latency. So they didn't make any promises about the latency specifically, but that know, led me to think that things could be okay. And one of the reasons why I thought that was because you can buy NBA League Pass and MLB Package and a whole other series of live TV channels on Amazon Prime. And if you buy those channels on Amazon Prime, they're not even kind of latent. It's like two minutes latent. The other side was Bezos actually said the biggest problem with cutting the cable is latency and sports specifically. So Bezos, I think he said it in 2018, might have been 2019, but he said he is going to build Amazon into a sub five second latent product down the road. So we had no reason to believe that Thursday Night Football and Amazon Prime would be so unbelievably close to what's actually happening on the field. And then, boom, we flip it on on Thursday Night Football last season. And it was just this dream come true. And then obviously with that, the whole season when the biding was occurring with the NFL for the rights to the Sunday ticket, we were really hoping that Amazon would win, knowing that that was the product that they had. And when Google won, it was disappointing, but we really thought that they would improve the product. And they talked about this high quality streaming experience. And I think the only thing that's high quality really is the fact that you can put four games on one screen at the same time. And you really question, okay, well, what did you guys really do for this product? So shame on Google for not figuring this out, and shame on the NFL for not recognizing how important this is. ESPN's super latent update of what's happening on the field was ahead of YouTube TV yesterday. It's completely unacceptable. And I was sitting there going, okay, I am not committing to YouTube TV. I do not have the devices to broadcast nine games at once through YouTube TV available and set up for my screens. But I am ready today, this exact day, to go out and get all those devices based on the product that they deliver. And of course, I will not be going out to get those devices. Instead, and this is obviously a really important question. What I'm relying on are sports books feeds that offer the NFL they are slightly more latent than a good coaxial cable feed to the same latency. That's about the range that they're at and through a lot of offshore sports books you can watch these games. And that's going to be my approach for the rest of the season provided that Google doesn't figure this out, that.

Shane Mercer [00:12:30]:

Now we're relying on the sports books to broadcast the games to us. And for everyone out there who's wondering, hey, why are we talking about latency? Well, first of all, Pace and I, we've done a whole episode on latency. You can go back and listen to that. But when it comes to football, especially in sports betting, these guys are betting live. And a big part of betting live is having eyes on the game and being able to see what is happening in real time. That is a big part of the decision making process when these guys are putting their wagers in with sometimes oftentimes just seconds to spare before the line changes or the line closes or moves in a particular direction. So that's why we're talking about this. For all of you out there who might be recreational sports bettors or sort of new in your professional sports betting journey, this is why it's such a big issue. John, how are you tracking the games? What did you do this past weekend to make sure that you had your eyes on everything that they needed to be on?

GosuThune [00:13:29]:

Yeah, so I'm more used to being having latency on all my broadcasts than these guys are. I've not had an Ota or even I've not had just cable, like coaxial cable in over a decade probably. So I've been relying on the streams. So I am behind. I do track games through the sports books through I use the Score app, the ESPN Game Tracker as well. It is behind, but I actually find it's at least more reliable than some that are faster. So they're hardly ever just wrong about something, which I like. So I have typically all of those tools up, but I tend to bet more on the situation of a game than rather than any one play and making a decision. That's just kind of like my style of looking at the flow of a game and thinking of whether to bet over, under or whatever on that. But it is incredibly frustrating and I think it's frustrating not just for bettors, but how many people play fantasy sports and then they get the notification on their phone that somebody scored a touchdown and they haven't even seen the game, they don't even know that team has the ball. Maybe I think it was the USC game this past weekend on Saturday where I think they had a five play minute 15 drive that went 70 yards and they had scored before I saw the second play of the drive because they just kept running to the line. And if you're playing, I think some people can do college fantasy stuff now. People can do people can bet on college props. You get notifications from a betting app that a team has scored and you barely even see them start their drive because they're moving so fast. Stuff like that is just crazy to me that we can't figure it out.

Andrew Pace [00:15:13]:

Well, we can figure it out.

GosuThune [00:15:16]:

Yeah, It's intentionally. They're doing it intentionally, I think, but yeah.

Shane Mercer [00:15:22]:

Wow. Who's doing it intentionally, John?

GosuThune [00:15:28]:

I don't know that the league necessarily wants people to have information in real time because I think they want them to be kind of reliant on these other sources. So I don't know that it's even in the best interest of the league or it's definitely not in the best interest of the sports books, which are very heavy league sponsors, to have people with this information in real time. So I'm not saying it's like a conspiracy or anything, but I just think it's when the incentives kind of align for people to bid high and kind of put a word in the ear of who to choose as a provider and whether they're going to stream live or delay it or not. I think that was probably a factor in it, to be quite honest.

Shane Mercer [00:16:06]:

Yeah. Motivations, right? Motivations are everything in this business. Okay. I want to sort of start looking forward and getting some advice for our audience on how they can approach the NFL season as a whole, but even more than just the season as a whole approaching next week, for example, or an individual week. So, Kenny, give us a sense of how you are going to prepare for next week. Having sort of one week behind you, one week under the belt, so to speak. How are you going to move forward and sort of what's your approach going to be for the week ahead or even the next few weeks ahead and then the season as a whole?

The Golden Goose [00:16:48]:

Sure, actually, I realized quickly in this week that I was a little under prepared with just the books that I had, how much I had in each book and everything. I had some challenges in the offseason just with banking. Bank of America doesn't like professional gamblers like Daniel Negrani who's had his bank accounts closed by bank of America. That happened to me in May, which kind of caused a lot of issues for know I had college savings accounts and everything for my kids and know my stock accounts, everything. Bank of America and Merrill Lynch closed their relationship with me. So I scrambled and got different banks. And now bank of America allowed me to move hundreds of thousands of dollars in a day with no issues. I switched to Chase and TD and I've run into all kinds of restrictions so I can't even fund the accounts the way I used to. So I've run into some obstacles that way and just getting the amount of money that I need in the accounts to be able to fire at the books, so to speak.

The Golden Goose [00:17:59]:

I dont really look at money as like an actual dollar amount. When I'm putting it into a sports book, I look at it as more as ammunition of it's basically me versus the book. And I'm trying to take them down and I don't have enough ammo in a lot of these books to really put a dent into what I would normally typically do. So my biggest thing for preparation for next week is getting some more accounts open, getting the ones that I have with more funds. I did build those bankrolls a lot yesterday, which is going to help, but I still want to have more in just to I in case I actually lose a couple bets, unlike I did yesterday where I didn't lose any, but just in case I lose bets so I have backup ammunition to fire at them next week.

Shane Mercer [00:18:39]:

Wow. Okay. Kenny with the big dog problems over here ya know mo money, mo problems hey, kenny. These are the kinds of things that I think those of us who are recreational sports bettors know new to sports betting and looking to become pros want to aspire to one day. These are the kind of problems I'd love to have. All right, john, what are you doing for the week ahead? How will you prepare and do your homework for week two and then even week three and four and going?

GosuThune [00:19:09]:

So I made sure to record all the games. So while I'm just going about my day during the week, this week I'm just going to have the games on. I'm going to try to make sure I watch every game all the way through, at least in some capacity because I just want to see a lot of the things that we don't pick up on because we see the highlight plays, we see the big plays, but it's like that saints titans game. And I know I'm wearing my titans thing, but I think for me, I like the titans more just because of the betting unders on them than actually rooting for the team. But I want to get to the bottom of that game. It's like, why were the defenses so strong? Was it really such bad play on the offense or just games that I don't know that a lot of people would really want to go back and watch again? I want to kind of study that and see how I can kind of adjust power ratings on some of what I have on the trenches in a lot of these games. So to go back and watch all the games and just kind of figure that stuff out and then I'm also going to watch kind of the way the pregame money is coming in so I can get an idea of where the public is going to be on some of these games and where the professional money is going to be. So I have an idea know it'll help me inform know we just saw Seattle get blown out at home as a big favorite, and we just saw Detroit go on the road and beat the Chiefs, the defending champs. And now Detroit's at home laying like a touchdown almost to Seattle. And I think if you'd set that line over a week ago, it wouldn't be close to that, right? So it's like, how can I figure out where those money's coming in, who's overreacting to what? And then we can leverage that information to find value when those games start going.

Shane Mercer [00:20:43]:

Yeah, wow, look at that. Going back and watching the tape. I love it. I mean, that really is studying and doing the homework. That's awesome to hear that we have a guy in the inplayLIVE community that's doing that diligently. John, thank you for that work. Pace, coming over to you now, you're a guy who famously likes to ignore all the know live in the moment bet live. What do you do to prepare for the week?

Andrew Pace [00:21:11]:

It's all about what we touched on. It's all about having eyes on the game. For me, I got into a conversation yesterday. We were really fortunate to have a couple of guys from inplayLIVE that I hadn't met with before in the room with me. And that's always exciting for me because you can always learn from everyone, right? And one of the guys, I'll just keep him anonymous. He sat down and he popped open his setup, and I saw things I'd never seen before. And he's like, hey, do you have a pen? And he's got preprinted tracking sheets because he's a pen and paper guy, so they're Excel sheets that are pre printed out, and he's writing in each wager, which for me, I just think about my hand hurting in school, writing an essay or something like that. And sure enough, he's got like, sheets of his tracking filled out. And I think real time tracking is important. I really struggle with it otherwise, unless I'm looking up historic data and things like that. So from a preparation standpoint, it's having those games on, learning as much as you can from different people in different setups. He had tripods with phones around him that weren't even for betting, they were for information. So it's crazy. If I was like, where does this team have the ball? He'd answer immediately because he had the score open on one of those that showed the down and distance of where they were. But for me, I would think like, hey, you know what? I'm just going to put this thing right beside me. But he had know with this curvy swivel tripod, like right in his face so that he could just get to it quickly. And then the last thing that I would say is, I love a lot of the stuff that John does, and I actually do a lot of it myself, but I don't tend to do it in the same way that he does necessarily. I might look at things like red zone efficiency, teams that kick the most, field goals, teams that punt the most, or what the average scoring is for a league in a season or a team in a season that's at the bottom to justify whether or not it's a good spot to take something that's really contrarian. So I can give you an example of something like that. The lowest scoring football team tends to put up about 16 and a half points of offensive scoring per game. Once the season is said and done, that's the worst team, and that ignores defensive and special team scores entirely. So when you have that kind of information in your arsenal and trends change, so you see that maybe the worst teams are scoring less this season or they're scoring more this season, and then I obviously like to look at the top side of that as well. But when you have that information, you recognize like, hey, these guys, everyone thinks they suck, everyone's betting against them. Everyone thinks that they can't score in this game. Obviously, coming off of the Giants Sunday Night Football, there are games where teams genuinely and legitimately don't score. But when you have that information available to you, it helps you to identify value live. And I look for data that justifies decision making that's ultimately going to give me more confidence when a wager loses, knowing that it was the right decision to make long term.

Shane Mercer [00:24:29]:

Wow, I love hearing stuff like this because I don't think I could find the time to put in the kind of work that you guys are putting in. So I am just grateful and thankful that I get to bet with you guys and know that you guys have already done all of that legwork and I get to benefit off of it just by being a part of the community and tuning in to the live streams when they're on. So, again, thank you guys for that. I really appreciate that. But I know that many other members of the community also very likely appreciate it. And again, if you're on the outside and you're thinking to yourself, well, what's this inplayLIVE thing all about? This is the kind of stuff you get to benefit from. So that 'BEHINDTHELINES' promo code is there for you if you want to join. All right. I want to get into the nitty gritty of betting live and paste. You kind of did it there for us in that answer there. But Kenny, I'm going to come over to you. When you're betting live on the NFL, what exactly are you looking for? Are you trying to make wagers on every single game or is there something specific you're looking for?

The Golden Goose [00:25:35]:

Andrew has a great skill in that he can scan all the games and kind of get a really good sense of the games as a whole. I don't have that skill, I kind of get more razor sharp focused on either one or two games at most is really where my attention span goes. But I kind of get a sense of because I'm also looking more for end of game and I'm not necessarily looking quarter by quarter more. My main focus is like end of game strategies. So I get razor sharp focused with basically one or two games where I pretty much a light goes on to me. Just from my experience of betting for so many years and watching so many games, I basically get a sense of I've seen this game before, I know how it's going to end and I'm pretty sure what the final score is going to be within a few points. So that's kind of where my main skill set is, is I just get razor sharp focused on one or two games. I have a tough time kind of viewing the whole thing. Now if somebody brings up, oh, look at this game, then I can kind of start evaluating know, distance, time left and everything. But I tend to get kind of that tunnel vision, which is definitely a flaw of mine, but it's also, I guess, a skill in some set.

Andrew Pace [00:26:47]:

I think it's a tremendous skill and I'll tell you why. What Kenny just said completely ignored that. That means that you're not betting on games that aren't working for the things that he is looking for. So what he said there has a massive discipline built into it and that's one of the things about becoming a pro that really differentiates you from the rest of the sports betting community and that is that you don't make long term decisions that will impact your family, finances, well being, all those kind of things. Kenny knows that he has a lifestyle that is like very few people in the world. And in order to upkeep that, he can't be betting every game because he will be a net loser. So when he's hyper focused on, let's call it two games, but then someone else says, what about this game? He actually ends up being focused on a lot more of them through the vision of other people, but he's not betting on them unless it checks off a whole series of boxes that he then deploys his bankroll on. And because of that, I think it's important to look back at some of the results. Like he dominated Thursday Night Football absolutely capitalized on the Chiefs really struggling in that game that happened to fit what he was doing really well. So that's great. But that's just one game on Sunday. He didn't eight every single game, but he dominated four or five of the games throughout the entire slate of the day. And there was a time 3 September ago when Kenny would have made probably about $10,000 on that Sunday by betting those strategies. And you can pretty much assume that you can add a. Zero to that comfortably these days with his scaling that he's done over the years. So when you're in this mindset, you start more and more eliminating things that aren't working and start focusing more and more on things that are working, which then of course, like he said requires maybe a game or two and that's.

Shane Mercer [00:29:03]:

Yeah, I love to sort of get that sort of insider knowledge. And Kenny, you talked know, knowing what a team will do because you've seen them do it before, there's just so much value in that experiential knowledge, that sort of historical knowledge that you have sort of deep in the back of your brain that just brings so much value to the group when they're wagering live. John, what specifically are you looking for when there's a big 01:00 slate, 01:00 Eastern slate of games on? We've got 8910 games on. How do you sort of approach that?

GosuThune [00:29:42]:

Yeah, I definitely kind of do the same thing. Probably somewhat of a mix between what Kenny is talking about and then also looking at all of the games at once. So I'll tend to try to focus on the first quarter and the first half when those games are when they start going. I'm trying to look a lot at down in distance, who has the ball, where the ball is, and how many points I have to give on maybe an under or a spread or something that might be already covering or something like that in that quarter or that half. And I will 100% just ignore games that are really high scoring. So it's not in my blood to want to bet on people to score or to bet an over or to bet somebody to cover a spread. If I see a game that's like seven to seven in the first quarter, I'd probably just going to forget that game exists. I didn't watch 1 second of that Chargers game until we looked at it at the very end because it's the only game still on. That game did not interest me at all. Everybody I've talked to said it was the best game of the week. It was awesome.

The Golden Goose [00:30:43]:

I was going to say the same thing, John. I was like Tyree Kill apparently went off. I don't think I saw a single play. I don't think I saw one single play in that charge. I was like, they got like 60 points. I was like, that game does not interest me at all.

GosuThune [00:30:56]:

Ya because all that speaks to me is just there's just volatility in that game. If there's just scoring happening all over time, to me it's just volatility and it's just kind of what I want to stay away from. So I'm looking for a lot of low scoring games. We love that Bengals Browns game yesterday. It was like terrible weather. Nobody could move the ball. Joe looked terrible. He had missed all of know a lot of things like that. Games like that were that's what that's normally just teams struggling to move the ball and looking for people backed up. How can I take advantage of this situation where it's going to be very unlikely that we see any points within the next seven to eight minutes at least?

Andrew Pace [00:31:34]:

You know what's so interesting about that Miami game, too, that I find kind of funny is that I think there were seven lead changes and gosh, I think the score was in the think the total ended up in the 60s. So obviously really high scoring for the NFL. Everyone's talking about Tua being the potential MVP now all this stuff. And it's so funny because the Chargers were seconds away from just doing what both teams were doing all game in scoring again. And if they had a kicked a game winning field goal, I know they didn't and this is the world of sports, but if they had a lost that game, none of that would have even remotely had been discussed at all. But because they squeaked out the win, I think they won by two. Now it's all Tyree Kill, MVP, Tua MVP. But I mean, you got to also give them credit, too. I mean, they did put up the numbers that they put up.

GosuThune [00:32:32]:

As someone who had a Tua 50-1 MVP ticket and he was the favorite when he got hurt last year, I'm very annoyed to see him still come out and do very well, though. I'm rooting for him. Right.

The Golden Goose [00:32:45]:

I just hope to be honest, I just hope he doesn't get hit in the head at all this season.

Shane Mercer [00:32:48]:

Yeah.

The Golden Goose [00:32:48]:

Because that could be a really bad season.

Shane Mercer [00:32:51]:

Yeah, I think that's what a lot of fantasy owners are worried about. If you've got Tua, you're very concerned about that, but also just from a fan perspective and just the enjoyment of watching a player thrive and play, but knowing that that risk is always there. Yeah, it's certainly concerning to say the.

Andrew Pace [00:33:09]:

You know, from a fantasy standpoint, shane, yesterday was one of the worst days of fantasy football ever. Obviously there's bad weather across the country, but at the same time, teams did just genuinely struggle. And if you look at the average points per week scored last week was way below the average. And that's where if you do follow fantasy and I know we touched on this already where some of those overlaps can occur, where you go, oh, why aren't my players putting up any points? Like all that kind of stuff. Well, chances are there might be an opportunity to translate that into profitable sports betting.

Shane Mercer [00:33:48]:

Yeah, certainly an opportunity to take that knowledge and apply it in sort of the field of live betting play. But that Chargers Dolphins game sort of stands out as the one that was super high scoring, really electric. But to John's point, and I think he said this maybe back on a baseball episode when we had him on. John, you like to bet against human achievement, and that really stuck with me, that line, and you certainly conveyed that point again here, where, you're know, you're looking for that ugly game where teams are struggling and, hey, if guys are scoring early, forget it. You're putting that game to the side. You're not even going back to it. Right? Yeah. Okay. Absolutely love that line, though. It just makes me laugh, and it makes me think a lot when I'm looking at games and what I'm going to place a wager on and how and when that particular line really stuck with me. Okay. I want to get sort of your personal kind of not reflections, but outlook on the season ahead, because how we define a successful season of betting, whether it's NFL football, college football, basketball, baseball, these are sort of important things. And it's a way of kind of getting your mind right as you go into a new season. So I want to ask you and Kenny, I'll start with you. What does a successful NFL season look like to you? And that could be a bankroll related thing, or it could be simply a matter of you're trying something new and you want to see if something works or you're testing something or you want to find out maybe something that you thought would work isn't. Or what does a successful NFL season look like to you? What will make you happy? Come.

Andrew Pace [00:35:39]:

Asking Kenny what will make them happy?

Andrew Pace [00:35:44]:

Some philosophical answer.

The Golden Goose [00:35:49]:

It's just to be honest, I just want to make a ton of money. That's really it. I'm in this for the money.

Shane Mercer [00:36:00]:

That's it.

The Golden Goose [00:36:01]:

I'm not in this to cure cancer or anything.

Shane Mercer [00:36:05]:

Okay, you're in it for the money. So how much money does it take then for the golden goose to say, I crushed that season?

The Golden Goose [00:36:14]:

Couple NFL with the overlap of some college basketball in there? If come like April 1, I have four or 5 million more than I have now. I think that's a successful. That would be my goal.

Shane Mercer [00:36:31]:

Four or 5 million people. Again, this is what you're aspiring to if you are going down the path of trying to become a professional sports bettor, this is how we grow and something to aspire to. Kenny, you were not trying to win four or $5,000,000 years ago, right?

The Golden Goose [00:36:47]:

No, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

Shane Mercer [00:36:51]:

Something to work towards. Okay. John, same question to you. What does a successful NFL season look like to you at the end of the season? Is it all about the zeros?

GosuThune [00:37:00]:

The zeros are definitely important since this is my job. So it's there. But I guess I'll try to find another of. Like, I do a lot of analytics, a lot of modeling and stuff like that, and I do that for both football and basketball. And I think part of it at the end of the season is trying to figure out how well did something do? What about the models or what about the analytics that I'm doing worked and what didn't work and what needs to be adjusted going forward? So, as an example, let's just use an example. I think road teams really did well yesterday. And if you followed kind of the trend of home field advantage in the last couple of decades, as if you just watch the way Vegas kind of handicaps, that home field advantage is really going away in a lot of professional sports, especially in the NFL. So there are certain teams I give no home field advantage to when I'm handicapping games and stuff like that. So how can I adjust that? Did I do a good job of adjusting that? Another one is just like, did I improve my ROI over the previous season? So let's say I push through a million dollars in aggregate of bets, and I made 100,000, and I had 10% ROI in one season. Can I get that to twelve or 13% the next year? Can I get to 15%? Because within all of that money that you're betting and all the bets you make, there's bad bets. We all make bad bets. And how can I eliminate those bad bets from what I'm doing right? How can I get my ROI better? No one's ever going to have 100% or whatever. Nobody's just going to win every bet. But if I'm winning 60% this year, can I win 65% next year? Can I improve that as the season goes on? To me, that's what's really important. And making sure to note what you're doing, that actually changes that. So that's why I agree. Earlier, they said tracking is really important. I try to track every single wager I make in real time with as much granularity as possible. Like, who's playing in the game? What bet did I make? How much did I bet on it? What was the number? Like, all that stuff. So at the end of the year, I can go back. It's like, hey, man, I took a bunch of these under six and a half and a quarter, and I didn't make any money on that. So I'm going to stop doing that and constantly reevaluate what I'm doing. So that's how I would judge success in another way besides just making money. Can I do it more efficiently?

Shane Mercer [00:39:34]:

Yeah. Anyone who's listened to this podcast for a little bit now knows about how tracking changed my sports betting life once I joined inplayLIVE, and it really I do it live. I track live. And I love to go back and just have a look at things. But I want to ask you something there, John, because you touched on something, and I'm wondering, does it all come down to tracking or do you know in the moment? And the question is, how do you know if it was a bad it? Do you know it was a bad bet because it lost. And do you ever make bad bets that won, where you look back and go, that was a bad bet. I got lucky there.

GosuThune [00:40:07]:

Oh, yeah. Normally, you know, if a bet is bad, I wouldn't say right after you make it, but pretty soon after you make it. So there was an example last year, I remember making a bet. It was like a full game under, but I made the bet before halftime. And when we got to halftime, no one had scored, but the number was the same, and all we did was accept greater risk because the book was like, kind of assuming that it was just going to go that way anyway. And so it's like, oh, I just made a note. It's like, hey, don't ever bet a full game under two minutes left in the first half. You're accepting greater risk. So that was something I noticed immediately. Another one is like, you make a bet and there's multiple turnovers that happen. And something is like, oh, maybe I won this under, but they gained 200 yards since I made the bet. This was a bad bet. I feel lucky to win. But then I had Texas Tech to cover a line in the game on Saturday, and they threw a pick six when the kids should have just gone down. And I would have won my bet if he had just gone down, like a smart person. But instead, he gave his team a chance to lose the game by scoring a touchdown that was a good bet that lost. I should make that bet again, and I will make that bet again. So it's not about whether it wins or lose. It's about if you did it 100 times, would you win or lose the majority of those?

Shane Mercer [00:41:27]:

Yeah, I love that, what you said there, too. You often know almost immediately after clicking the button if it was a bad bet, and you just have that feeling. I know. I felt that myself. And then sure enough, it plays out kind of the way you expect it to play out, and you're like, yes, that was a bad bet. Why did I do that? The reason I'm bringing up this question though, guys, is know and sort of trying to go beyond the dollars and sense of it all is know, when I went into last NFL season, I was new in, you know I was sort of basing my success off of zeros and sort of like if my bankroll goes from this to this, it'll be successful. And then I very quickly realized maybe four weeks into the season that, wait a minute, I can't base my definition of success on dollars because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Even though I've been watching football for 20 plus years, 25 years, I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't know how to do what these guys are doing. Live in the moment. I need to learn and I need to figure this out and learn how they approach games, learn how they think about the of as the season went on. I feel like I did that and I accomplished that. So for me, last season was a successful season even though I didn't make anywhere near six figures off of the NFL season. So that's sort of why I'm bringing this up because, Pace, you often talk a lot about how do you define success? So I want to know how do you personally define a successful NFL season? What does a successful NFL season look like to you? And then I guess the other question then would be if somebody's listening for the first time or they're early in their journey, how should they try to define success for themselves?

Andrew Pace [00:43:20]:

Right? Yeah, I think it's a loaded question for sure. And I think that something Kenny and I really learned last season was number one. We're not bulletproof. That's obvious to say, but Kenny and I really went through I think it was a three or four week run where both of us were like, what the fuck are we doing and why are we doing this? And is this working and are we making good bets? Because it doesn't feel like we are right now in a sport and time of year that that had never happened to us before. Two very different people that have a completely different path of success and completely different strategies where both sides of that were not working. So one of the biggest successes that we had last season, the zeros came. But despite all that or factoring all that in was that we overcame adversity and found new ways to succeed. And one of the biggest things like touching on John's sort of method of success was we really had a weird NFL season. And you might not think it's significant today but in 2020 scoring was up like we had never seen before. We talk about home field advantage and those types of things. There actually was no one in the stands. Some stadiums were playing noise like it's just ridiculous. So adapting to that world where there's an element to this being like practice and I don't know if any of you have played sports before that are listening but all it takes when you're in high school is the right girl to show up to a game or your family or whatever where the way you play changes. And you can't tell me that those guys feel as excited for a Sunday in an empty stadium versus coming out with fucking cannons firing and smoke shooting and crowd screaming and the list goes on and on. So that was a strange year and it definitely impacted the way we were betting then. But it was easy. It really was easy that year. And now today we're kind of coming off of last year with just this unbelievable levels of success and trying to translate it into a new season. So yeah, how would I define it? I think consistency would be one thing but the next thing that I would say is giving people the right information, tools and impact so that they can succeed. And I saw last year the way people learning to bet within our community start to translate across sports. So things that we were doing in basketball emerged as things that we were doing in football. And I recognized that people were making money during mine and Kenny's struggle and doing really well as well. So hearing those stories and then putting all of that information together in a way to empower the group to make decisions for themselves that they own and they pick the way they handle certain things. Kenny and I are always going to be the people and John are always going to be the people that can identify certain situations based on potential value through book discrepancies, which many of the members do on their own. But through book discrepancies, but also motivational discrepancies based on what we know about what's going on in the field currently. From weather to motivations to whatever the case may be. But how you actually act on that information is the knowledge that the group needs as individuals, not collectively as individuals, to actually be able to succeed on their own from a learning growth and financial standpoint. So if we can look back on the season and we have more of the right members succeeding over the long term so that doesn't mean that the group size doubles or triples. More of the right people that recognize this ownership that they need to take in the grand scheme of their personal journeys and their success, that, yes, do have some of those zeros to back it up. That's what it's all about.

Shane Mercer [00:47:38]:

Love hearing that. Of getting sort of the right people to be part of the group and contributing to the group on an ongoing basis. Kenny, I've got to ask you, since Pace brought it up, how did you deal with that downtime of the year last year?

The Golden Goose [00:47:53]:

Yeah, it was definitely a really rough time because normally September is kind of that month for me where I don't have an insane amount of profit just because I'm new season, kind of taking it easy. There could be rule changes, there could be personnel changes. So September is kind of my learning month and I kind of ramp it up from there. This struggle that we had last year was kind of right in the middle of the season, which I'd never ever experienced before. So it was a bit of a shock to the system. I basically lowered my bets from there on out and ramped it up basically as if it was September again and then we started hitting our stride again. But that was a rough couple of weeks and it was right at the beginning of when college basketball is starting. So I started picking up some more college basketball and everything with that and just kind of making small bets with that. So I was working like seven days a week basically at that time. So I kind of worked myself through that little bit of a struggle. One more thing to touch on with your question, though, that I was thinking of as John and Andrew were talking is I lost kind of the DraftKings has always been my favorite book. We're on the show before talking about some of the great things that they've done for me over the years. And I've beaten them by more than all the other books probably combined. But I pretty much lost them as a book for this year too. So my max bets there are super small where they used to let me bet 20, 30, 40,000, whatever I want to bet with them. So I've kind of lost them as a book this year. So if I can make even to be honest, if I lowered my goal to say, 2 million and I was able to do that doing it through all of these other books combined, I think that would be a decent goal as well. Not using kind of DraftKings as a crutch and using some of the offshore books and things, some of the books that technically don't limit, I guess, to a certain extent.

Shane Mercer [00:49:52]:

I love that. Yeah, not using one book as a crutch. I know that I have shared my Bet365 crutch and losing that crutch and how that benefited me in a big way. And I know other people in the community have shared similarly with Bet365 specifically and end up getting limited on that. And it turns out to be one of the best things because you end up not relying on that crutch and sort of gaining strength from it. So, Kenny, good luck in that effort and getting off of well, and you know, for all of you listening out there, you're know, Kenny talk about college basketball. Yes, that's another big sport for inplayLIVE. So is the NBA, so is the NHL. That inplayLIVE isn't all just about NFL football even though it is a very big part of what we do because one, you know, we all love think you know, we all have a lot of fun with NFL. Football. But know it allows for guys like kenny to place those big wagers because the market size is so much bigger and so it provides a lot of opportunity. All right, guys, I think we will leave it there for this week. But for all of you listening, please be aware we're going to be talking about a lot more other sports, but I think we'll probably also be talking more about the NFL as the season goes on. All right, guys, till next week, keep eating those books thanks for tuning into another episode of behind the Lines. Remember to like, download and subscribe. We are on YouTube, Apple, Spotify and everywhere you get your podcasts. Have a betting story or want to be featured on our podcast, drop a note in the comments below. And if you want to join inplayLIVE. Use promo code 'BEHINDTHELINES'.